Where Love Illumines (Where There is Love Book 2) Page 10

  Rowland looked at the trees for a moment. “I love to see the flowers and fruit which God makes the earth bring forth to please us, and then I think, oh, that I could bear more of the fruit of righteousness to please Him.”

  Mary was impressed by the solemnity of his thoughts, but displeased that in this romantic spot his words should be so pious. “Oh, Rowly, is that all you think of—pleasing God?”

  Rowland turned sharply to her and took her hand. “No, my dear Mary, there is another I would please too. If only it pleased her to be pleased by me.”

  “In faith, sir, I can’t follow all your pleases. But I’m sure it was a very pretty speech.”

  Mary found her heart was beating rapidly, and she would have liked to continue that dialogue. But there was not time, for on the road below them they could see people coming up from the dales around, walking toward town to attend the preaching service. When Mary and Rowland arrived at the marketplace, a great crowd had gathered. Rowland stood on a wagon in the center of the square and read his text: “‘Awake, thou that sleepest…”’ Mary overheard two women talking.

  “Ann, that’s the baronet’s son who goes about preaching.”

  “Are you sure it’s the baronet’s son himself?”

  “Yes, that I am, for I saw his brother, Mr. Richard Hill, not long ago, and he is so like him. I am sure he is of the same family.”

  The women settled down to listen, but a man near Mary seized a stone and pulled back his arm, taking careful aim at the preacher. Mary had a fleeting thought of flinging herself in front of the man when a burly arm reached from behind the would-be assailant, grasped the arm holding the rock, and said in broad Gloucestershire dialect, “If thee dost touch him, I’ll knock thy head off.” The troublemaker dropped the stone. The audience became quiet, awed by the solemnity of the subject and the earnestness of the preacher. Mary listened with particular closeness, hoping to find answers for some of the questions plaguing her.

  “Think particularly,” the preacher urged his listeners, “whether you’re choosing for time only or for eternity. For, of course, a sensible person will wish to choose that which will be best in the long run. It is just as much part of the consideration of what will be best for me between my thousandth and two-thousandth year as between my twentieth and thirtieth. It is curious how our estimate of time is altered by its being removed to a distance.

  “And so, my friends, be certain that the choices you make will last for eternity—choose to spend your life on those things that will count for as much two thousand years from now as twenty years from now or twenty days from now.”

  Mary was thoughtful on the long drive back to Bath. There had been a power and a logic to Rowland’s words that she couldn’t deny; and yet she did not want to discuss them, for fear that bringing her thoughts into the open would force upon her a choice she was not yet ready to make.

  “You are weary, Mary?” Rowland asked as they neared Bath. “You have not told me what you thought of the service.”

  “In faith, I’m not sure what I thought. I should have been outraged at such unseemly worship. And yet there was a truth to the preacher’s words.” And that was as far as she would say, but the brief sentiment brought a sparkle to her companion’s eyes.

  When they reached the Royal Crescent, Rowland reached under the carriage seat and produced a small white package tied with red ribbons. “I leave Bath tomorrow, as you do. Think of me kindly as I prepare to take my degree and apply for ordination.” He held the package to her.

  She fumbled with the ribbons eagerly. How amazing that he should have thought to bring her a farewell gift. The paper fell away, and Mary gasped with delight. The silver filigree shoe buckles ornamented with delicately wrought roses lay in the folds of paper.

  Mary smiled into the brown eyes beside her. “Indeed, I shall think of you, sir.” Then her chin tilted, and her lips curled in a saucy smile. “But I shall leave it to your imagination to decide what is in my thoughts.”

  Seven

  Rowland’s final term at Cambridge was a steady grind of studying, relieved occasionally by the stimulation of preaching to one of his congregations. On the night of May 18 he wrote in his journal that he had preached in his first barn—and he hoped it might not be his last. A sudden rain shower had prompted the farmer to invite all those standing in his field into his barn where, he remarked, their singing might prove soothing to his animals.

  The country people warmly welcomed Rowland. “Been away a long time, young fella. Ain’t ’eard no real preachin’ since you been gone.” A burly farmer engulfed Rowland’s hand in his mighty grasp.

  “Sakes alive, it’s Mr. ’ill a-come to preach to us.” An old grandmother gave him a toothless grin. Then her eyes filled with tears. “I thought not to ’ear ye again.”

  And Rowland saw with amazement many damp eyes in the hay-scented barn. He knew he had missed his people, but he had not thought they had missed him so much. “The Lord keep you,” he replied. “I always find more comfort in speaking to my own people than anywhere else.”

  Whenever Rowland faced discouragement, he always looked for refreshment in the responses of those he preached to. And the greatest discouragement came on those occasions when his preaching provided him with little comfort.

  But he found little to discourage this evening, as the barn continued to fill. Rowland talked directly to the people, his examples drawn from things he had seen in the fields or villages. Only one segment of the audience did not respond with favor to such homespun wisdom. A group of gownsmen had interrupted their country ride to join the service that evening.

  “Egad! It’s Pierrot Hill practicing for his entertainment at Midsummer Faire.”

  “There is much humor in his performance, but I find his costume somewhat dull.”

  “Zounds! You’ve hit upon it! He must be fitted for cap and bells.”

  Rowland paused and gritted his teeth at the ridicule. His first impulse was to give the gownsmen a good trimming. But instead, he prayed silently for grace to act with forbearance. “If I must be a fool, I would choose to be God’s fool,” he said quietly, and allowed the words time to sink in before he continued with his preaching. The gownsmen moved on.

  But the students were not content to let the matter rest. Fortified by a supply of port and recruits to their cause—both collected at a public house where they stopped on their way back to the university—they marched to Rowland’s rooms. “All right, Hill, we’ll show you who’s the fool!”

  Heavy blows fell on Rowland’s outer door. He rarely bothered to shut this extra door meant to provide added privacy and protection. But tonight, weary as he was, he had closed the barricade. Now, though, he doubted even this defense would withstand the pounding.

  “What, are you—coward as well as heretic?”

  “Brave enough words in the barn where your friends have pitchforks, but now you hide.”

  The shouts and bangs showed no indication of stopping. Rowland knew the mob was perfectly capable of keeping up such a row much of the night, and the university authorities, accustomed to turning deaf ears to the frequent riots between town and gown, were unlikely to intervene. It seemed best to face his assailants before their frenzy grew. Maybe they would listen to him. He unbarred the door. “My fellows, I—”

  The first blow sent him staggering backward. Before he could gain his balance, he was knocked to the floor.

  Rowland struggled to get up, but at least ten pairs of feet trampled over him as the inflamed, drunken gownsmen rushed into his rooms and began ripping papers from his writing table and pulling books from his shelves.

  “No, not my letters!” he cried as the leader of the mob flung open a box and began ripping apart his letters from Wesley and Whitefield. Rowland lunged for the man but had to duck a volume of sermons hurled at his head. On his right a large, black-haired fellow picked up a flint and tried to strike a spark to a pile of Rowland’s sermon notes. Rowland started to fling himself toward the
arsonist when suddenly the rioters fell back.

  Rowland looked toward the door in amazement. His normally placid gyp had entered the fray swinging a weighty poker, his cliff-faced visage made awful by the fire in his eyes.

  “He’s an avenging angel—or demon, more like.”

  “I’m sped!”

  The rowdy crowd departed as abruptly as they had entered, leaving a wreckage of scattered papers and dumped books behind them. “Thank you, Bottisham. Most timely.”

  The gyp presented him the sturdy metal instrument with an equally poker face. “Might I suggest you lay this in as a weapon of defense, sir?”

  The next day Rowland headed for his lecture a bit hesitantly, wondering if the gang might be lying in wait for further vengeance. Much to his surprise, he was greeted cheerfully by classmates who had barely deigned to nod to him the previous term. Persecution had secured him instant popularity—a status Rowland never thought to achieve at Cambridge.

  A student he knew only by sight approached him in New Court. “Sorry to hear you were rioted last night, Hill. Shameless bunch of fellows.”

  And just outside the lecture hall, Pentycross saluted him. “Hill, I’ve just heard the news. You all right? Need any help setting your room to rights?”

  Rowland assured him that all was well, and that he and Bottisham had everything back in order.

  Pentycross grasped his hand once more before hurrying into the lecture. “Can’t have any harm come to our best-loved homilist.”

  Inside the classroom others smiled at him or raised a hand in greeting. Rowland was completely overcome. How strange that the ostracism he had suffered should suddenly be wiped away, not by any great mark of success on his part, but by one of the most humiliating things that could occur to a gownsman. It was certainly true that God worked in ways mysterious to man.

  As the press of studies bore in, however, Rowland had little time to “assert eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to men.” As the line from Milton flitted through his mind, he thought of one who had been a most devoted reader of the Puritan poet before her mind had turned to more worldly things. Closing his volume of Locke for an instant, he prayed for Mary.

  Pearce, who was tutoring him closely for his degree exams, noticed the waver in Rowland’s concentration and brought him back to the second Treatise on Government. “State the contract theory of government, sir.”

  Rowland rubbed his forehead in an attempt to focus his thoughts on the matter at hand. “The authority of the people is supreme, founded as it is in natural rights. These rights include life, liberty, and property. The people have the right, through their representatives, to judge whether rulers have violated the contract and whether changing times have made a change in government necessary.”

  “Well done, Hill. You will have no trouble with the examiners.” But in spite of his encouraging words, Pearce insisted they continue at the books for an hour longer.

  Rowland had no argument with Locke’s theories nor with the requirement to study him; but it never ceased to seem strange to him that in a school of theology, as St. John’s purported to be, besides the study of Locke, courses in physics and mathematics bulked the largest. At St. John’s even the classics had fallen into great contempt, and honors were based entirely on mathematical ability. What that had to do with preparation for ministry one could only guess.

  A week later, when the study and exams came to a close, Rowland risked tarnishing his new popularity by declining an invitation to a wine party and went instead to his rooms to write a long overdue letter to his sister Jane.

  Camb. Tuesday Eve

  My very dear sister,

  I ask my dear sister a thousand pardons for not answering her kind letter long before this. All last week almost every moment of my time was taken up in preparing for my degree, which being now over, I’m more at leisure to write.

  I was examined by my tutor, then by the senior dean, and then by the junior dean, and then by the Master, who all made me but construe a verse or two apiece in the Greek Testament; except the Master, who asked me both in that and in Plautus and Horace too. I must conclude that my time at Cambridge has not been an intensely intellectual life.

  Earnest effort seems to have gone out of the life of the college, as if the loss of religious passions of an earlier generation resulted also in the loss of serious academic endeavors. A college in need of a measure of reform, I should characterize it.

  And now but one step remains—ordination. All things continue to give me the safest assurance of an entrance into the ministry by next summer. My heart trembles at the thought of my admission into such an important office. I see in myself nothing but ignorance and blindness, utterly unqualified for so great an employment.

  If ever I should make an able minister of the New Testament, I see that I must be first wholly given up. I see it requires much grace simply to follow the Lamb wherever He goeth, to forget self, love of ease, and look up to the glory of God.

  I fear much lest my treacherous heart lead me to dissemble. I know that a faithless minister cannot but be a curse instead of a blessing to the church of Christ. Pray for me that Jesus’ love may ever constrain me to be faithful unto death.

  Therefore, my dear sister, I must subscribe myself,

  Yr. poorest tho’ affect Br.

  Ro Hill

  He scattered sand on the ink to dry it, then folded and sealed the document with a blob of blue wax, and addressed it.

  He sat long looking at the missive, thinking of what he had said. He did fear his heart. He knew the awesome responsibility of his calling—to speak for the mighty God of the universe, creator of heaven and earth; to call sinners to repentance that they might spend eternity in the Heaven God had created for them. And yet he knew his weakness, his fears.

  He was only a man. And next to his longing to serve God, he longed for the companionship of one he had loved for years. In spite of the fact that Charles Wesley’s words and example had laid to rest his worst anxieties over Berridge’s warnings, he was deeply concerned for Mary. What if she refused him? Or—and a deeper ache caught at his heart—what if she remained in the spiritual confusion she exhibited at Bath? He knew that her religious upbringing had been sound, if rigidly formal, and that her words in their last times together had been spoken in the heat of argument; but he must pray that Mary find her way out of this spiritual wilderness for her own dear sake even if she were never to be his wife.

  As if that weren’t enough, one final worry nagged at him. What if he should fail the ordination examination? The degree exam had been painless enough, but what if Bishop Sparke should require a depth of learning he had not acquired? The thought caused him to turn again to study his notes from the Sunday afternoon Greek Testament lectures.

  Three days later Rowland assembled with fourteen other men of St. John’s and other colleges to travel to Ely for examination and admission to holy orders. As Rowland looked at those around him, it was obvious that the church attracted every sort of man. Some, as one would expect, were sons of clergymen. Others were sizars who had worked their way through college as servants to more privileged students—the attainment of a benefice from the university being the most obvious way for a poor man’s son to rise in the world. But more than half of the group were, like Rowland, gentlemen’s sons.

  The group was ushered into a large room in the Bishop’s Palace where the bishop’s chaplain, serving as proctor, distributed a separate text to each ordinand with the instructions that he was to write a Latin theme sermonette on the topic. The entire morning passed without a sound in the room except the scratching of fifteen quills across paper. Only two small events provided a break in the protracted concentration. A son of the chaplain came in to talk to his father. And shortly after noon, one of the examinees blurted out, “Egad! I’ve blotted my page!” crumpled up his paper, threw it to the floor, and began again.

  By the time the proctor collected the papers, Rowland’s hand ached, but he felt sa
tisfied that he had expressed exactly the right balance of scholarship and practical application in his sermonette. If the rest of the examination went as well, he should soon be a deacon.

  At three o’clock the chaplain began ushering the ordinands singly from the room, and a housekeeper served around dishes of tea and slices of spice cake to those still waiting. Hill was the fifth to be called. He followed his guide down a long, polished hallway through double, Gothic-arched doors, and into the Presence.

  Bishop Sparke sat behind a large, carved desk, lavender and gold streaks of light from the stained-glass window behind him falling across his face and on the white sleeves of his robe. A slight nod of the eminent head told Rowland which straight-backed chair to sit on. The bishop picked up his sermonette and read it out aloud. He went straight through without expression or pause. Not another word was spoken.

  Rowland bowed and left the room.

  When all had been interviewed, they returned to the inn, where relief at having the ordeal over led them to consume vast quantities of roast joint, pudding, and ale. When Rowland finally went up to his room, it was to the sound of his fellow ordinands singing songs that would not be heard in any of the churches they hoped to shepherd.

  Rowland slept fitfully. Tomorrow would not be the culmination of all he had dreamed of and worked toward for years—it would be the beginning. He wondered what living would be assigned to him. He didn’t care about status; he wanted to serve wherever God could best use him. And the income was of no great concern, for he had a competent allowance from his father; now that he was to be ordained, he needn’t fear the patriarchal threat of being cut off. But he did hope the vicarage would be a comfortable one, for Mary’s sake. No matter how his rational mind worried him with questions over whether Mary would become his wife, the fact was that he never pictured the future without her.